Company
by Miandrethal
Summary: Disclaimer: A short one-shot with S/U pairing. It's not really an origin story. Spock contemplates when exactly he let Nyota in so deeply. Based on the song "Being Alive" by Stephen Sondheim from the musical Company.  Lyrics included.


**Company**

_Someone to hold you too close  
Someone to hurt you too deep  
Someone to sit in your chair  
And ruin your sleep  
And make you aware of being alive_

_Someone to need you too much  
Someone to know you too well  
Someone to pull you up short  
And put you through hell  
And give you support for being alive-being alive  
Make me alive, make me confused  
Mock me with praise, let me be used  
Vary my days, but alone is alone, not alive!_

_Somebody hold me too close  
Somebody force me to care  
Somebody make me come through  
I'll always be there  
As frightened as you of being alive,  
Being alive, being alive!_

_Someone you have to let in  
Someone whose feelings you spare  
Someone who, like it or not  
Will want you to share a little, a lot of being alive  
Make me alive, make me confused  
Mock me with praise, let me be used  
Vary my days, but alone is alone, not alive!_

_Somebody crowd me with love  
Somebody force me to care  
Somebody make me come through  
I'll always be there  
As frightened as you to help us survive,  
Being alive, being alive, being alive, being alive_

_- Stephen Sondheim_

Nyota Uhura has been living at Commander Spock's off-campus apartment for almost a month now. It strikes Spock as strange that with his Vulcan preciseness that he cannot pinpoint the exact moment she went from _staying _to _living_ with him. He finds himself treading lightly over the subject, not really wanting to breech it in the first place. He does know that she enjoys his apartment. She says that it's nice and unexpectedly warm where she'd expected it to be Spartan. Despite the anal cleanliness that was anticipated, he knows that Nyota enjoys the light airiness of his off-campus rental that she doesn't get in her Starfleet dorm. She enjoys the glossy windows and natural light, the comfortable furniture of earth tones, with shades of green and dusty orange and rose splashed in for color. She enjoys shuffling around his large kitchen making them dinner on most nights, using the spices he'd purchased but hardly used since coming to Earth. The pots and pans thank her for her courteous use.

Spock also knows that he enjoys seeing her in his flat. He likes knowing that she is there when he sometimes works late. He enjoys smelling his dinner cooking as he approaches closer. He enjoys walking in and seeing her things in quaint little piles, distressing his neatness. And on nights when she's late in the labs, he likes hearing her keys in the door.

They've run out of coffee among other kitchen essentials. She let him know by e-mail what they needed and to pick it up before he comes home. Spock is in the local grocer, trying to wrap his mind around the fact that he is spending his credits on food for them. He's trying to avoid the fact that she will be cooking the food he is purchasing, and that she has her own credits.

He's standing looking at milk, trying to figure out how much to purchase for two. He hasn't done anything with more than one in mind in the whole of his adult life. His mind is breaking into algebraic math in order to figure out the consumption of milk and how often he saw her drink some or use it to cook. Getting a grip, he realizes that the purchase of milk should not require the use of algebra. Spock digs his communicator from his satchel and views the grocery list. It's a vague list, having only three items of importance (eggs, milk, coffee), while the rest of the note just gives him the simple task of getting food. Spock decides on the 2% pint and moves on to the eggs and the coffee, the easy part.

He stands looking around the massive grocer with a sense of helplessness. He makes an executive decision to bombard the fruit and vegetable aisle. Crisp apples, juicy peaches, fragrant oranges, he piles them all into his shopping cart and turns towards the vegetables. Leafy spinach, fragrant chives, ruddy potatoes, and mushrooms are his choices. He ambles around the store picking up fresh, spongy wheat bread, a couple of tins of pasta and sauce, stinky cheese, and marmalade for toast. As he pays he idly wonders if she will want meat. It is something they will have to discuss when he gets home.

He carries the bags home in the budding cool of spring in San Francisco. The salty sea air lifts Spock's spirits. He can see himself doing this every day, carrying groceries home, purchasing things for two; taking a chance at being a couple. As he walks he envisions easy, lazy days in bed. He sees her slim form slipping naked from the shower in between his cool sheets; her slipping next to him and onto him, calling his name, gripping his shoulders, biting his chest. He likes thinking of warm nights of coffee and intellectual intercourse, him resting his head on her breast finding solace in the way she strokes his hair and his ears and sings to him.

He doesn't think she understands how tempting this is for him. How easy it is for him to do this. Nyota doesn't realize what a full pantry and warm pots make him feel inside. She's giving her time and herself freely, peeling away at every layer that he's worked so hard to put up. Her sweet words and funny stories, deep kisses, and delicious cooking is dismantling brick by brick the wall he's enclosed over his heart. She couldn't possibly understand how frightened he is to let her in. How hard it is to trust that she won't leave, won't run away, telling all of his secrets and leaving him open and vulnerable. So many have tried to break him to see if they could, so many have come close to his emotions and he's pulled away just in time. But with Nyota, he doesn't know if he will be able to pull back in time. He doesn't know if he wants to.

Every reserve and block he puts up, she knocks down with ease. She doesn't force or push nor does she ask; she simple does. If Nyota wants to kiss him she does, if she has it in her mind she wishes to read his books she does. She uses his computer, washes his clothes, has mixed her toiletries in with his, has brought clothes to hang and mix in his closet. She never asked to do any of this, she simple just did and Spock finds he can't deny her. He hopes he never has to find a reason, and more importantly, she doesn't find a reason to stop.

He smells food cooking and hears music and her singing loudly in his apartment as he nears. The neighbors will wonder what has happened. It's just that he's never let anyone this far into his life before. There were other women held at arms length, always wanting what he is siphoning to Nyota and that she's freely accepting. He doesn't know how to be with someone who doesn't need him. She just wants him. It's not her fault that she's not broken; that she knows how to give as much as she gets. Spock is just not quite sure how to accept being wanted.

But he thinks he can try. This is how it starts: he'll open the door and she'll smile at him. They'll put up the groceries together and then sit and talk over dinner. He'll kiss her and they will make love. They will make a start together, just the two of them. He will help her pull down his walls; he will learn to trust her. He has spent years of his life learning how to be solo, stoic, how to push away. With Nyota he is going to learn how to be open, how to share, how to make her stay.

It would be so much easier to end this, to go on the same way he's been living, and the fact that he hasn't done that yet makes him suspect that it may be right to call this love.

**-END-**


End file.
